άρθρο του κ. Mark O'Neill
When was the last time you visited the library? Or a museum? When was the last time you read a reference book from cover to cover or took the time to travel to an exhibition? I bet it was quite some time ago since most of these things are now readily available online, digitised and searchable.
As more and more libraries and museums take their collections online, the less people need to actually visit those places. This is both good and bad. Good because more and more people have access to collections they wouldn’t normally be able to see. But bad because, as I said, it removes the need to actually go there in person if you can, and see the items for yourself. Falling attendance means falling revenue which means these places will ultimately be forced to close. So it’s a bit of a catch-22 digitising these amazing collections.
Here are some places which have taken either all or most of their collections and papers online for all to see – and it’s all completely free to view on your screen.
As well as being able to search their library for
a particular book title, you can also view their
Digital Collections. This includes a wide variety of things including
photographs,
newspapers,
legislative records from Congress, and
map collections. I am a big fan of old maps so the last section was particularly fascinating for me, especially the
old military campaign maps from the Civil War (they can also be downloaded to your computer).
I also particularly enjoyed the
Manuscript Reading Room, where you can view the private papers of
Hannah Arendt,
Sir Alexander Graham Bell,
Thomas Jefferson,
Abraham Lincoln and
George Washington. There are literally hundreds of thousands more documents by various other people, all meticulously scanned online with foreign language documents accompanied with translations. You can literally spend hours on this site and still not get through a small fraction of what the LOC offers.
The Smithsonian actually consists of 19 museums, 9 research centers, and the National Zoo. So it is a
huge institution, covering so many diverse subjects and this is reflected on their website.
Check out their
art and design section with scans of tens of thousands of images which are searchable. You can also view their
History & Culture section,
Science & Technology and even view
a bug photo collection in their Museum of Natural History (not for the squeamish!)
British Museum
The British Museum is also a world-renowned place which utilises the internet to its full advantage.
You can search over 4,000 items in the Museum’s collection, including
Chinese Jade and
Sacred Objects from the Pacific. Explore ancient cultures such as the
Romans and
Medieval Europe. Gaze upon one of the Museum’s most prized objects,
an Anglo-Saxon helmet.
The British Museum also embeds their own specially-made videos on the site including one on the
Greek Parthenon (although there seems to be no way to embed the videos on your own site). They even show you
how to make a mummy (if a close relative dies and you feel so inclined to put them on display!)
One of the big players in the library/museum collection business and it’s no different with their online offerings.
This is an institution I have huge respect for as it houses some of history’s most important documents. You can look at, and translate,
the Magna Carta. Using Shockwave Flash, you can “
turn the pages” of some of the greatest books ever, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Lisbon Bible. You can view and compare
over 100 quartos by Shakespeare. If that isn’t enough, you can
listen to nearly 24,000 audio recordings and explore another 20,000.
he Hermitage is in St Petersburg, Russia and consists of the following :
The main architectural ensemble of the Hermitage situated in the centre of St Petersburg consists of the Winter Palace, the former state residence of the Russian emperors, the buildings of the Small, Old (Great) and New Hermitages, the Hermitage Theatre and the Auxiliary House. The museum complex also includes the Menshikov Palace and the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory.
Most well known as the home of the
Mona Lisa, the Louvre in Paris has 30,000 works of art which are digitised and
searchable on their website.
The best place to start is the
Overview, which leads off into the various different sections of the gallery. As well as listing the various departments, you can also see the latest news and latest acquisitions.
The one complaint I have is that their font is too small and so you have to increase the font size. You can find out how to do that
in Tina’s article.
I am a little bit biased here, being Scottish myself, but I honestly believe that the National Library of Scotland has some fantastic exhibits worth looking at. If you are ever in Edinburgh, I recommend a personal visit but for those unable to make it to Edinburgh, the NLS’s website has some fairly good
digital collections.
But I think one of the most serious downsides to the NLS site is that they don’t have scans of their extensive Robert Burns collection. They only talk about it and refer you to book titles which they have in their library. How can they have a Scottish digital collection and not talk about Mr Burns? That’s sacrilege ah tell ya.
I’m sure there are many other libraries and museums online with unique and valuable digital collections but I have to stop this post somewhere! I hope this article has given you a bit of insight into the treasures available for view online and if you know of any more, please do tell us about them in the comments.